Analysis:
Rhino on Mac OS X coming at a time of powerful change in Apple
History

Robert McNeel and Associates' popular Rhino modeling
program is coming to Mac OS X later this year, with a public
beta
very soon; it will at first feel like an entry into a
crowded market, but not for long given Apple's stellar growth
rate and upcoming transformations in the larger computing
industry.

COFES
and Rhino

I had the chance to meet Bob McNeel at COFES this year where
we had a discussion about Rhino and the Mac platform.
I was both surprised and delighted to learn about the Mac
version news and asked Bob what industry research was informing
their decision to support Mac OS X in future versions. It
turns out a lot of it was coming from within their community.

In
that discussion I mentioned @Last Software's decision making
process in supporting the Mac a few years back and how
they embraced the platform without a whole lot of empirical
evidence
that the product would sell well.

Advertisement

Regardless, @Last moved forward and the Mac versions have
been a huge success for them. Bob was -- like most developers
considering the Mac platform -- cautiously optimistic. The
same thing could be said of the Alias folks prior to bringing
Maya to Mac OS X, or IMSI/Design with TurboCAD. And UGS'
decision to fully support NX 5 on the upcoming Leopard OS
is also guarded with this mixture of caution and optimism.
(You can read more about that in an upcoming feature soon!).

The point is, adopting the Mac platform for a Windows developer
isn't easy but the rewards seem to always outweigh the
concerns and issues, eventually if not rather quickly.

Maya and SketchUp have been "white hot" products and when
they made the adoption jump there were a whole lot of
users clamoring for the new Mac versions. Other developers
have had to work at it a bit more to find that success, but
in the case of IMSI/Design for instance, success on the Mac
platform has meant developing a new internal development
strategy that will greatly streamline and unify code bases.
Once Windows developers dip into the Mac eco-system and find
some success they begin to rethink their processes and development
strategies, realizing that the upside potential is two-sided:
one part is the size and growth in the Mac market, the second
part is realizing savings in costs by re-engineering internal
processes to address both platforms.

Apple's Growth and Rhino

Rhino will be entering the Mac market at a time when Apple
is seemly enjoying solid percentage point market share gains
every six months or so and accelerating. And the
most compelling aspect of this acceleration is that is it
more than half due to Apple's switch to Intel (and to some
extent Microsoft's disappointing Vista delivery). Readers
need to remember that
the "Halo Effect" never really materialized due to iPods
alone. It picked up a clear visibility at about the same
time Apple announced the switch to Intel and that halo effect
has only grown in clarity since then.

There are several elements now combining into a perfect
storm which could really accelerate Mac market share growth.
The first is the momentum Apple and the Mac currently have.
The second element is the innovations coming down the pike
with Apple and iTunes and the iPod. And the third and most
powerful element is clearly the iPhone.

Apple's new iPhone is going to change everything. I believe
the product is so strong it is akin to the introduction of
the original Mac. Its interface is just as ground-breaking.
Moreover, what makes it even more like the original Mac
is that as a "new type of device" it is clearly
at the forefront of the next-generation of software development
where software
is delivered as a service. Jobs and Gates made this point
about the Mac project at D5 last week. And the more one thinks
about the iPhone, and how its Google Maps application works
in particular, the more this is apparent.

So what does this mean for Rhino now?

If this was a surfing story we might talk about that one
big wave that seems to be lining up for us. In Rhino's case,
while the wave may be big in the general Apple story sense,
the wave they really want is actually a series of big waves
which afford them a "protracted window of time" during which
Apple
innovations will be front and center in the users'
mind. Couple that with key innovations in Rhino itself --
especially those that exemplify and take advantage of Apple
innovations coming up in Leopard -- and you have an ideal
situation for a Windows developer leader to establish a powerful
beachhead in the Mac eco-system.